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Tag: Memoir

  • The Story of My Experiments with Truth

    Gandhi wrote his autobiography in Gujarati as weekly instalments in his journal Navajivan between 1925 and 1929, and his secretary Mahadev Desai translated it into English. It covers his life from childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot to about 1921, and Gandhi presents it not as a political history but as an account of his spiritual and moral experiments.

    He describes, with striking frankness, his child marriage, adolescent rebellions, guilt over his father's death, student years in London grappling with vegetarianism and English manners, and his faltering start as a lawyer. In South Africa, being thrown off a train becomes the turning point that leads to his community work, the Phoenix settlement, Tolstoy Farm and the first satyagraha campaigns against discriminatory laws.

    The final sections cover his return to India, the Champaran and Kheda struggles and the Ahmedabad mill strike. Throughout, Gandhi experiments with diet, celibacy, nursing, simple living and religious ideas, and he records failures as readily as successes. The book is essential for understanding the man behind the movement, including views that later readers find troubling.

    Book details

    AuthorMahatma Gandhi
    First published1927
    Original languageGujarati
    Translated byMahadev Desai
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)450
    SettingPorbandar, Rajkot, London, South Africa and India, 1869-1921

    Themes

    • Truth
    • Non-violence
    • Self-discipline
    • Spiritual experimentation
    • Racial injustice

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants Gandhi's own account of how his ideas formed, in his own humble and searching voice.

    If you liked this, try

    • Gandhi Before India
    • Wings of Fire
    • Long Walk to Freedom

  • Wings of Fire

    Wings of Fire, published in 1999, tells the story of Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam up to the early 1990s. It begins in Rameswaram, the island temple town where his father owned boats and was close friends with the local priest, and where young Kalam sold newspapers to help the family. Teachers who saw his promise, and his studies of aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, set his direction.

    Most of the book covers his professional life: early work on hovercraft, then the Indian Space Research Organisation under Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan, where he led the SLV-3 satellite launch vehicle project, and later the Defence Research and Development Organisation's integrated guided missile programme that produced Prithvi and Agni. Failures, test explosions and team struggles are described alongside the successes.

    Co-written with his colleague Arun Tiwari, the book is plain in style and generous in crediting mentors and co-workers. It became one of the best-selling Indian memoirs, especially among students, because it presents science, hard work and faith as a route out of humble circumstances. Kalam later served as President of India from 2002 to 2007.

    Book details

    AuthorA. P. J. Abdul Kalam
    First published1999
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)180
    SettingRameswaram, Madras, Thumba, Sriharikota and Hyderabad, 1930s to 1990s

    Themes

    • Perseverance
    • Mentorship
    • Self-reliance in technology
    • Humble beginnings
    • Leadership

    Who should read it

    Students and young professionals looking for an inspiring, true story of science and service.

    If you liked this, try

    • Ignited Minds
    • My Journey
    • Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

  • Shyamchi Aai

    Shyamchi Aai, meaning Shyam's mother, was written by Sane Guruji in 1933 while he was imprisoned in Nashik jail for his part in the freedom movement, and published in 1935. The frame is simple: at an ashram, Shyam tells his companions stories from his childhood over forty-two nights, and almost every story centres on his mother.

    The family lives in Palgad in the Konkan and slides from respectability into debt and hardship. Through small episodes, such as caring for a sick neighbour, sharing food, speaking the truth when a lie would be easier, or treating animals and lower-caste people with kindness, the mother teaches Shyam values that shape his whole life. The father's pride and the family's financial ruin give the stories an undertow of sorrow.

    The book is closely based on the author's own life, and its unashamed emotion has made generations of Marathi readers weep. It is read in schools as a lesson in compassion, self-respect and simple living. Acharya Atre's 1953 film of the book won the first President's Gold Medal for best feature film in India.

    Book details

    AuthorSane Guruji
    First published1935
    Original languageMarathi
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    SettingPalgad village, Konkan coast of Maharashtra, early twentieth century

    Themes

    • Motherhood
    • Moral education
    • Poverty and dignity
    • Compassion
    • Childhood memory

    Who should read it

    Parents, teachers and anyone wanting a deeply emotional portrait of a mother's quiet moral strength.

    If you liked this, try

    • Pather Panchali
    • Wings of Fire
    • The Story of My Experiments with Truth

  • Educated

    Tara Westover was the youngest of seven children raised on a mountain in Idaho by parents who distrusted the government, public schools and hospitals. Her father, convinced the world was about to end, stockpiled supplies and put his children to work in his scrapyard, where serious injuries were treated with her mother's herbal remedies rather than at a hospital. Tara had no birth certificate until she was nine.

    At seventeen, having never attended a classroom, she taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to pass the ACT and enrol at Brigham Young University. There she heard of the Holocaust for the first time and began to see her upbringing from the outside. Scholarships took her to Cambridge and Harvard, and she earned a doctorate in history.

    The heart of the memoir is less about academic success than about the cost of change. Westover writes about a violent older brother, the pull of family loyalty, and the struggle to trust her own memory when relatives remember events differently. Her clear, unsentimental prose made the book a long-running bestseller.

    Book details

    AuthorTara Westover
    First published2018
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)334
    SettingRural Idaho, Utah and Cambridge, England

    Themes

    • Education
    • Family loyalty
    • Abuse
    • Self-invention
    • Memory

    Who should read it

    Readers moved by stories of self-transformation and anyone wrestling with the pull between family and personal growth.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Glass Castle
    • Hillbilly Elegy
    • I Am Malala

  • When Breath Becomes Air

    Paul Kalanithi had studied English literature and biology at Stanford, history and philosophy of science at Cambridge, and medicine at Yale before training as a neurosurgeon at Stanford. In his final year of residency, with prestigious job offers waiting, he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer despite never having smoked.

    The first part of the book describes how a young man obsessed with the question of what gives life meaning chose to pursue it through the brain, the organ where identity resides. He conveys the punishing hours of surgical training and the weight of operating on patients whose speech or personality could be changed by a millimetre. The second part shifts to his illness: treatment, the uncertainty of prognosis, his return to the operating room, and the decision with his wife Lucy to have a child.

    Kalanithi died in March 2015 before finishing the manuscript; Lucy Kalanithi wrote an epilogue, and Abraham Verghese contributed a foreword. Spare and lyrical, it is often read by medical students and by families facing serious illness. The book asks how a person should spend limited time and what work, love and meaning look like when the future suddenly shrinks.

    Book details

    AuthorPaul Kalanithi
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)228
    SettingStanford, California

    Themes

    • Mortality
    • Medicine
    • Meaning
    • Illness
    • Fatherhood

    Who should read it

    Anyone facing serious illness, caring for someone who is, or interested in the ethics and inner life of medicine.

    If you liked this, try

    • Being Mortal
    • Man's Search for Meaning
    • The Year of Magical Thinking

  • Born a Crime

    Trevor Noah was born in Johannesburg in 1984 to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father at a time when their relationship was illegal under apartheid's Immorality Act. His very existence was evidence of a crime, so as a small child he was often kept indoors and could not be seen in public with his father.

    The memoir is organised as a series of linked essays rather than a strict chronology. Noah recounts life in Soweto with his grandmother, being too light-skinned for Black neighbourhoods and too dark for white ones, using language to slip between groups, running a pirated CD business as a teenager in Alexandra township, and brushes with the police. Each chapter is introduced by a short explanation of the history or politics behind it.

    At the centre stands his mother, Patricia, a devout, independent woman who refused to let the system define her son. The book is laugh-out-loud funny yet unflinching about poverty, racism and domestic violence. It won the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor and has a young readers' edition.

    Book details

    AuthorTrevor Noah
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)304
    SettingJohannesburg and Soweto, South Africa, 1980s-2000s
    AwardsThurber Prize for American Humor 2017

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Race and identity
    • Mothers and sons
    • Poverty
    • Language

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand apartheid's legacy through a personal story that is as funny as it is moving.

    If you liked this, try

    • Long Walk to Freedom
    • Educated
    • The Glass Castle

  • Shoe Dog

    In 1962, fresh from Stanford business school, Phil Knight persuaded his father to lend him money for a trip around the world and pitched himself, with no company behind him, to the Japanese shoemaker Onitsuka Tiger. He came home as the American distributor of their running shoes and started selling them from the back of his car at track meets in Oregon.

    The memoir covers the years from that crazy idea to Nike's public offering in 1980. Knight describes his partnership with Bill Bowerman, his old University of Oregon track coach, who tinkered with soles on a waffle iron, and the eccentric early employees who ran the business. Much of the drama is financial: constant cash crises, hostile banks, a bitter split with Onitsuka and the creation of the Nike brand and swoosh, plus a ruinous customs duty dispute.

    Knight writes with unusual candour about self-doubt, mistakes and the toll on his family. Little of it reads like a corporate history; it is a story about persistence and the chaotic reality of starting a company. The final chapters step back to reflect on what the company cost him and on the people who made it possible, giving the memoir an unexpectedly moving close.

    Book details

    AuthorPhil Knight
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)386
    SettingOregon and Japan, 1962-1980

    Themes

    • Entrepreneurship
    • Persistence
    • Partnership
    • Risk
    • Sport

    Who should read it

    Aspiring founders and sports fans who want an honest account of how messy and uncertain building a business really is.

    If you liked this, try

    • Steve Jobs
    • Zero to One
    • The Ride of a Lifetime

  • Becoming

    Michelle Obama divides her memoir into three parts: Becoming Me, Becoming Us and Becoming More. The first recalls a close family in a small apartment on Chicago's South Side, a father with multiple sclerosis who never missed work, and the teachers and doubters she met on the way to Princeton and Harvard Law School.

    The second part follows her career at a Chicago law firm, where she was assigned to mentor a summer associate named Barack Obama, and her move into public service and hospital administration. She writes candidly about marriage counselling, a miscarriage and IVF, and her deep reluctance about her husband's political ambitions.

    The final part covers the 2008 campaign and life in the White House: raising two daughters under constant scrutiny, launching initiatives on childhood nutrition and military families, and being judged as the first Black First Lady. The writing is warm and conversational. The book sold more than ten million copies within months of publication and was followed by an accompanying documentary.

    Book details

    AuthorMichelle Obama
    First published2018
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)448
    SettingChicago and Washington, D.C.

    Themes

    • Identity
    • Race
    • Family
    • Public life
    • Ambition

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in American politics, women's leadership or an intimate account of family life in the White House.

    If you liked this, try

    • A Promised Land
    • Long Walk to Freedom
    • I Am Malala

  • Long Walk to Freedom

    Nelson Mandela began writing his autobiography in secret on Robben Island, where the manuscript was smuggled out in parts, and completed it after his release with help from the editor Richard Stengel. It was published in 1994, the year he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.

    The book starts in the Transkei village of Qunu, where Mandela grew up as a member of the Thembu royal house, and follows him to Fort Hare University and Johannesburg, where he trained as a lawyer and opened the country's first Black law practice with Oliver Tambo. He describes joining the African National Congress, the Defiance Campaign, the Treason Trial, the turn to armed struggle and the Rivonia Trial that sent him to prison for life.

    Long chapters on prison life show the daily humiliations of Robben Island, the friendships among prisoners, and the slow negotiations with the apartheid government that led to his release in 1990. Measured and reflective rather than bitter, it is essential reading on one of the twentieth century's defining political struggles.

    Book details

    AuthorNelson Mandela
    First published1994
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)656
    SettingSouth Africa, 1918-1994

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Resistance
    • Imprisonment
    • Reconciliation
    • Leadership

    Who should read it

    Anyone wanting a first-hand account of the struggle against apartheid and the character of the man who led it.

    If you liked this, try

    • Born a Crime
    • I Am Malala
    • The Autobiography of Malcolm X

  • The Diary of a Young Girl

    Anne Frank received a diary for her thirteenth birthday in June 1942, weeks before her family went into hiding to escape the persecution of Jews in German-occupied Amsterdam. For more than two years, eight people lived in concealed rooms behind her father Otto's business premises, helped by a small group of employees who brought food and news.

    Writing her entries as letters to an imaginary friend she called Kitty, Anne describes cramped quarters, quarrels with her mother and with the dentist who shared her room, the fear of discovery at every noise, and the war heard through the radio. She also writes about growing up: her changing body, her friendship with Peter van Pels, her religious and moral questions, and her ambition to become a writer. In 1944 she began revising the diary herself after hearing a radio appeal to preserve wartime records.

    Her father, the only one of the eight to survive the camps, published the diary in Dutch in 1947. Translated into some seventy languages, it is among the most widely read books in the world and a central text for teaching about the Holocaust.

    Book details

    AuthorAnne Frank
    First published1947
    Original languageDutch
    Translated byB. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)283
    SettingThe Secret Annex, Amsterdam, 1942-1944

    Themes

    • Holocaust
    • Adolescence
    • Confinement
    • Hope
    • Identity

    Who should read it

    Students and adults alike who want to understand the Holocaust through the voice of one vivid, thoughtful teenager.

    If you liked this, try

    • Man's Search for Meaning
    • Night
    • The Book Thief